The Name Game
by NinjaNovelist
Summary: A one-shot in which Harry and Ginny sit down to discuss picking a middle name for their second child.


**Disclaimer: As you can probably tell by my inferior writing abilities, I am not JK Rowling. Therefore, I don't own Harry Potter.**

"Come on, Harry!" cried an ecstatic Teddy as he dragged his godfather into the living room. "You promised that you'd play Exploding Snap with me as soon as dinner was over."

Harry feigned annoyance at the seven-year-old. "We've already had to feed you," he said jokingly. "Now we have to entertain you too?"

Teddy blinked. "Yes," he stated simply.

Harry grinned. "Well if I must..."

He was just about to seat himself next to the boy, when a indescribable force sent Harry spiraling into the couch.

"No, you mustn't," said Ginny, walking in with James on her hip. Harry caught her discreetly slipping her wand into her back pocket.

After he had recovered from his collision with the sofa, Harry stared at his wife in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"We're sitting down and coming up with a middle name for the baby," Ginny replied.

She proceeded to do so, but found that the toddler James could barely fit on her lap anymore on account of her growing stomach.

That game of Exploding Snap was becoming more appealing with each passing minute. "Can't it wait till later?" he protested as he took a squirming James from his mother's arms.

"Harry, the due date's in a month," Ginny argued. "If we don't do this now, we never will."

He knew she was right, but that still didn't stop him from running a hand through his hair in frustration.

Name-picking was not his favorite activity. The idea of going through a list of people who had passed in order to name their child after them was nothing but painful to Harry. But he also knew that this was the best way to honor those he had cared about most.

So he faced the young boy playing on the floor and said, "Hey Ted, why don't you start setting up while Ginny and I discuss a few things?"

"Okay!" Teddy answered brightly.

Harry turned to his wife again. "So Gin," he began. "What sort of name are you thinking for little Albus Potter?"

They had decided upon a first name long ago, after a man who had always been there when they needed it. Who went down doing what was right.

Ginny shrugged. "Nothing in particular at the moment. You?"

Harry leaned back against the cushion in thought. "I've been thinking Remus..."

Teddy's head snapped up. "No," he said flatly.

Both adults suddenly turned towards the boy in shock.

"But Teddy, that's your father's name," a confused Ginny explained slowly.

"I know," he replied. "Which is why when I'm a grown-up, I'm going to name my son that."

Harry and Ginny exchanged a glance.

"It's all yours," Harry relented.

Teddy smiled, his hair morphing into a sunny yellow color. "And my daughter's going to be called Nymphadora."

"Your mother always hated her name, you know," Ginny pointed out with a laugh.

"I don't care," Teddy declared stubbornly. "_I_ think it's pretty."

As Teddy returned to his game, hair now reverted back to it's usual shade of blue, Harry couldn't help but think that while at times he portrayed some of his father's rational line of thinking, the majority of his personality contained Tonks' spunk.

"Alright, Remus is out," Harry continued. "And George and Angelina have dibs on Fred. We could do Alastor, Cedric, Colin..."

Ginny shook her head. "None of those would really fit with Albus," she reflected. "The thing I like about the other names we chose is that both the first and middle names complement each other so well."

She appeared to be talking more to herself than to Harry, a habit she had doing quite often as of late.

Ron would constantly complain to him about having to deal with Hermione's mood swings (which, fueled by her first pregnancy, were even more violent than normal). Unlike her friend, however, Ginny's side effects included spacing out in a nearly Lovegood-like manner. Harry was not sure which he would rather have to go through.

He decided to preoccupy himself with providing a fussy James with a book until Ginny had had her say. Her rambling train of words continued to play in the background.

"Like James Sirius- the two of them were best mates since they were kids, closer than two friends could ever be. And Lily Luna just sounds good together. Besides, the gentleness and understanding nature that I always hear your mum had reminds me a lot of Luna. We also need to keep in mind that..."

Thankfully, Harry found an excuse to divert his attention from Ginny's mumbling when he heard a tiny "Da!" being exclaimed at him.

Harry glanced down upon hearing little James' address of him. The toddler proudly showed his father his most recent discovery on how he possessed the ability to hold a book with his teeth. Harry couldn't not smile as he gently pried the corner of the book from the boy's toothy grasp, but paused to look at the particular page James had been on.

He realized that he had unknowingly given James a photo album, and within it was a photograph of the second Order of the Phoenix. Harry recalled of a time when Mad-Eye Moody had given him a picture taken of the first Order, and its reincarnation decided to do the same.

There were many familiar faces in it, waving gaily at him- having no idea that half their members would be dead in two years time. Harry's main focus, however, was trained on only two: the lighthearted, half-moon bespectacled, wonderfully wise founder Albus Dumbledore, standing right in the center of the group, and the sallow faced, greasy haired, secretly heroic man just to his right.

Two great Hogwarts Headmasters. Two unlikely friends. Two of the bravest men Harry ever knew.

Suddenly it occurred to him that the unceasing chatter he had grown so accustomed to over the months had gone turned to find Ginny staring at him with a look that told she was trying to get into his mind and see what he was thinking.

With a smile, Harry wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him. He took one sweeping glance around his family of five, finally resting his gaze back on his curious wife.

"Say Gin," he asked casually. "What do you think of the name Severus?"

**First Harry Potter fic. Whatchya think?**


End file.
